Customer loyalty reward programs have been proposed in which financial institutions issue payment cards to consumers. The financial institutions authorize merchants to honor the payment cards allowing consumers to purchase goods and services using the payment cards. Various consumer rewards programs have been affiliated with the cards including cash back on a percentage of total purchases or frequent flyer miles or redeemable points for merchandise, services or travel or even retirement accounts. These rewards programs are usually applied monthly when the statement is issued. However, the rewards are not based on specific items, but are generally based on the total monthly or annual gross receipts. Therefore, the specific purchases are not related to the customer, but instead only the store code is related to a customer so that tracking of individual items is not possible to develop specific customer buying habits, but only develop a track of what stores were patronized by the customer.
Similarly, grocery chains have issued customer discount cards which provide customers with store discounts which are credited to the consumer at checkout. These customer discount cards are not credit cards or charge cards, but are merely customer account identification cards. Furthermore, the discount is provided at checkout by the merchant or chain, not the product manufacturer unless the chain itself manufactures the product. These store discount cards have the advantage of being able to track customer shopping habits as well as demographic information to assist the store in development of marketing strategies for products and services, but the store discount cards can only be used at the particular store or chain and therefore does not track shopping habits outside of the products supplied by the particular store.
In view of the foregoing, it can be seen that there is a need for an electronic based capture system that provides a paperless, administratively free unobtrusive environment capable of identifying, recording and reporting, special offers and discount transactions to consumers.